Life at the Charles Mintz Studio

An office boy once claimed he was responsible for the Charlie Mintz cartoons making it onto the screen. Which may explain a lot about their lack of quality.

Actually, the office boy was kidding, and I suspect everybody at Screen Gems worked long and hard. But the Columbia releases don’t really show it. In the Mintz years, there were some funny cartoons at the outset in the ‘30s; who can dislike a cartoon with opening animation of an elephant playing his trunk like a saxophone? But by the time Mintz died at the end of the decade, something had gone haywire. The studio relied on show biz caricatures, and plots were someone undeserving got harassed. Even Mel Blanc’s voice work lacks amusement as he reads lacklustre dialogue. He yelled too often.

Things didn’t improve before the studio closed in November 1946, having been taken over by Columbia. Some animation was expertly done but there were too many cartoons that left you wondering “What did I just watch?”

Despite this, there were talented people and some of the cartoons shine through.

Here are a couple of stories about the Mintz operations. There were actually two studios in the ‘20s. Mintz’s brother-in-law George Winkler made Oswald shorts in Caligornia for Universal until it decided to sign a deal with Walter Lantz. In New York, another team made Krazy Kat cartoons. Mintz combined everyone on the West Coast in early 1930 and formally merged both corporate studios the following year.

This first story appeared in newspapers starting January 18, 1930.

Animated Cartoons Explained
NEW YORK—Animated cartoons form one of the most interesting novelties upon the screen. They represent an entirely different technic from the ordinary motion picture. The cartoon and the feature film both commence with a scenario and from that point diverge into different channels.
The Winkler Film Corporation from whose studio the famous Krazy Kat Kartoons issue is the oldest company in the industry devoted exclusively to the production of animated cartoons. For over fifteen years under the supervision of Charles B. Mintz, president of the concern, animated cartoons have been created in the Winkler Studios of New York and Hollywood. During that period nearly every animator of importance has worked for the firm at some time or another.
The Krazy Kat Kartoons, now being released by Columbia Pictures Corporation, are the creations of Ben Harrison and Mannie Gould. The two men work together plotting the antics of the educated feline and after having arranged a complete continuity turn it over to a staff of twenty animators, who make the separate drawings that go into the film.
It takes approximately 9,000 separate drawings made with pen ink to produce a six minute cartoon. Twenty men work for four weeks perfecting the extraordinary athletic maneuverings which go into these few minutes.
The introduction of sound has brought certain changes in the animated cartoon in the way of speech, synchronized scores and sound effects so elaborate that the drawings must be more carefully made in order to fit the music closely. Under Joe DeNat, musical director, a ten piece orchestra prepares and executes the musical score while four effect men under the direction of an expert in queer and unusual sounds provide the incidental noises. When the drawings are completed, they are filmed a drawing at a time. The completed animated action film is then synchronized with the speech, effects and music.

Here’s a feature story from the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News of May 28, 1936. The photos accompanied the article. It’s a shame these are scans of photocopies of the newspaper, not the actual photos. My thanks to Devon Baxter for supplying them.



Animating Cartoon Seen Snail-like in Pace
110 Specialists ‘Combine’ To Turn Out 7 Minutes Of Screen Allure
By MORTON THOMPSON
A man with a atop watch sits in his shirtsleeves at a draughtsman's desk. The ticking of metronome punctuates his pencil strokes. At the end of the board a cigaret burns unnoticed into the wood. A cartoon comedy has begun for the screen.
Five months later, 110 specialists will have developed the animated cartoon idea begun to those first nimble sketches into the finished screen product.
The man with the stop watch paces a rough draft of his ideas. He hands it to the studio’s staff of composers. Music is scored to fit each minute action.
A staff of animators continue the sketches. They leave many gaps. Dozens of draughtsmen fill in the progress of action in these gaps. A roomful of girls trace the completed drawings on celluloid. Other girls brush in color. A special camera department films the result in careful sequence. As cautiously as a surgeon times his strokes in an operation near a beating heart the cutting room crew edits the completed film. And at length, after many projections and executive conferences, the cartoon comedy is finished.
It will be set before on audience. It will run exactly 420 seconds.
Machine Precision
That is the story back of one of the cinema’s most popular short features— the animated cartoon comedy. Like a well drilled army of scientists, each move timed, each line exact, each detail as precise as a mathematical formula the work goes painstakingly and never-endingly on.
At the Charles Mintz Studio at 7000 Santa Monica Blvd., an institution which pioneered in the industry, such a picture of activity has been in progress for years.
Animated cartoons are costly. That seven minutes entertainment you saw on the screen cost from $15,000 to $22,000 to produce, Mr. Mintz disclosed.
His plant ran never satisfy the demand. Their goal is 26 pictures a year. Usually they manage to eke out 20 or 21.
Temperament Lacking
There are no problems of actors or director's temperament on an animated cartoon studio producer's mind, but there is a large staff of highly trained experts— artists if you like— working at constant tension and high speed, to be considered. And each has an inordinate pride in his work.
Mr. Mintz, for instance, will confide with a sympathetic smile that Joe De Nat, the studio composer, has a very important role to fill.
"The picture is made or marred right here in the music department," Mr. De Nat avers strongly.
Something in the same line is expressed with the same certainty by Ben Harrison, the man with the stop watch. “The picture,” he smiles confidently “is made or marred right here in the story idea department.”
And Art Davis, Sidney Marcus and Al Rose, the animators, will draw you aside to whisper that of course the really IMPORTANT work is the animator’s work and of course Eddie Killfeather, the arranger, and Bernie Grossman, the lyricist, smile tolerantly at this for they KNOW.
Credit Where Due
And over the entire scene Mr. Mintz and Jimmy Bronis, his assistant, grin benignly, “Come and see us again soon,” they urge. “Nice how the boys shoulder responsibility for the picture's success, isn’t it. We like to encourage them in their attitude. Naturally, you know, the picture couldn't get to first base without the producing staff.”
It would have made a very impressive speech if the office boy hadn't stopped us as we were leaving. He had his arms full of manuscript bundles and drawings, and he was evidently bound on some brisk errand into the labyrinth of drawing room.
"Say" he croaked “you ain't letting them big shots fool you are you? Where would they be,” he pleaded, “if it wasn't for me bringing the stuff around to them to get started on in the first place? All I gotta do is be five minutes late. Why the whole picture is made or . . .”
The man with the stop watch had already begun a new picture.

Fansites for all kinds of things have come and gone. Pietro Shakarian toiled on a site devoted to the Columbia cartoons, including post-Mintz. It’s not on-line anymore but has been preserved at Archive.org. And you can view Harry McCracken’s obsession with Columbia’s Scrappy series in our right-hand list of sites.

There are some very low res Columbia cartoons on a few of the video sites for you to check out. Perhaps some day we’ll see them treated better and DVD releases from 16mm or 35mm prints available. The demand may only be for die-hard classic animation fans, but the shorts deserve preservation and an examination by a new generation of cartoon lovers.